Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions

A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain train­ing” reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ural, non-drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very timely, given the aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and chang­ing lifestyle.

This past Tues­day, the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, and Smart­Sil­vers spon­sored an event on The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket: Build­ing Bet­ter Brains to explore the real­i­ties and myths of this grow­ing field. The panel was mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion, and com­posed of a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and 3 CEOs of pro­gram devel­op­ers in the field. Before the panel, I had the chance to present an overview of the state of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket based on our upcom­ing report to be released on March 4th.

Why are we talk­ing about this field at all? Well, for one, an increas­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are achiev­ing sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial suc­cess in pack­ag­ing “brain exer­cise”. An exam­ple is the line of Nin­tendo games, such as Brain Age and Brain Train­ing, that have shipped over 15 mil­lion units world­wide despite lim­ited sci­en­tific sup­port, since 2005. What is less vis­i­ble is that a num­ber of com­pa­nies and sci­en­tists are part­ner­ing to bring prod­ucts to mar­ket with a more solid clin­i­cal val­i­da­tion. We esti­mate the US mar­ket was $225m in 2007 (grow­ing from $100 in 2005). Wheras K12 Edu­ca­tion used to be the major seg­ment, adult con­sumers are respon­si­ble for most of that growth: we esti­mate the con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to $80 m in 2007.

Who is buy­ing these prod­ucts? Yes, of course, many adults over 50 who want to pro­tect their mem­ory are among the pio­neers. 78 mil­lion baby boomers are eager to try new approaches. A grow­ing num­ber of retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties and nurs­ing homes are offer­ing pro­grams to their res­i­dents to expand their usual fit­ness and social activ­i­ties. And we can’t for­get about K12 edu­ca­tion: cer­tain brain fit­ness soft­ware pack­ages have shown they can help kids who have dyslexia and related difficulties.

Is there sci­ence behind these claims? Do these prod­ucts work? It depends on how we define “work”. If “work­ing” means quan­tifi­able short-term improve­ments after a num­ber of weeks of sys­tem­atic “brain train­ing” to improve spe­cific cog­ni­tive skills, then the answer is that a num­ber of pro­grams do seem to work. If , on the other hand, “work­ing” means mea­sur­able long-term ben­e­fits, such as bet­ter over­all brain health as we age, or lower inci­dence of Alzheimer’s symp­toms, the answer is that cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gests they may, but it is still too early to tell.

Are there any pub­lic pol­icy impli­ca­tions? We cer­tainly believe that there are. The Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol recently part­nered with the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion to develop a com­pre­hen­sive Cog­ni­tive Health roadmap to bet­ter guide research efforts and improve pub­lic edu­ca­tion on the lifestyle habits that every proud owner of a brain could ben­e­fit from fol­low­ing. Given the high rates of trau­matic brain injuries and stress dis­or­ders found in a large num­ber of the men and women com­ing home from the Iraq war, the mil­i­tary is invest­ing heav­ily in research to help iden­tify prob­lems to develop tools to solve them, and we expect that research will trans­late into wider health appli­ca­tions. No pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, to our knowl­edge, has directly addressed his or her pri­or­i­ties in the cog­ni­tive health realm but, given the grow­ing impor­tance and eco­nomic impact of brain-related dis­or­ders, we expect that to hap­pen soon.

What are some trends that exec­u­tives and investors should be look­ing at to under­stand this grow­ing mar­ket?

Let me make a few predictions:

1) An increased empha­sis on Brain Main­te­nance, from retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties to gyms and health clubs. Will health clubs one day offer brain fit­ness pro­grams, and per­haps “brain coaches”? We think so.
 
2) Bet­ter and more widely avail­able assess­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tion will enable of all us to estab­lish an objec­tive base­line of how our minds are evolv­ing, iden­tify pri­or­i­ties for “work­outs” and lifestyle inter­ven­tions, and help us mea­sure progress. Science-fiction? Not really. there are already pretty good tests used in clin­i­cal and med­ical envi­ron­ments, the chal­lenge will be to refine and pack­age those assess­ments in a consumer-friendly way.
 
3) We will see more and bet­ter computer-based tools, each of which may be more appro­pri­ate to work on spe­cific pri­or­i­ties. Just as we find a vari­ety of machines in health clubs today, in the future we can expect dif­fer­ent pro­grams tai­lored to train spe­cific cog­ni­tive skills.
 
4) More non-computer based tools will also pro­vide much value. There is more and more research on how med­i­ta­tion and cog­ni­tive ther­apy, to men­tion 2 exam­ples, can be very effec­tive in lit­er­ally re-wiring parts of the brain.
 
5) Insur­ance Com­pa­nies will intro­duce incen­tives for mem­ber who want to fol­low brain fit­ness pro­grams. Per­haps even com­pa­nies will offer such pro­grams to employ­ees to attract and retain mature work­ers who want access to the best and the lat­est inno­va­tions to keep their minds sharp.

Now, this being a pretty new field, the panel dis­cussed sev­eral open ques­tions, that will only be clar­i­fied with time:

– What is the right busi­ness model? are we talk­ing about content-driven edu­tain­ment? or ther­a­peu­tic appli­ca­tions, per­haps with some reg­u­la­tions by the FDA? sell­ing soft­ware prod­ucts? online sub­scrip­tions?

– What is the killer appli­ca­tion? fun games with unproven brain ben­e­fits? pro­grams that improve the men­tal skills involved in spe­cific activ­i­ties, such as dri­ving? appli­ca­tions that help slow down the pro­gres­sion from Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment to full-blown Alzheimer’s symp­toms?

– How will con­sumers and insti­tu­tions receive qual­ity infor­ma­tion and edu­ca­tion to nav­i­gate through the emerg­ing research and the over­whelm­ing num­ber of new pro­grams, sep­a­rat­ing real­ity from hype?

In sum­mary, what were the main take-aways from the event?

1. Research indi­cates that a num­ber of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties (atten­tion, mem­ory…) can be assessed and trained

2. An emerg­ing mar­ket is start­ing to develop-growing from an esti­mated $100m in 2005 to $225m in 2007, in the US alone-, and is poised to keep grow­ing at sig­nif­i­cant rates.

3. Many com­pa­nies are cur­rently sell­ing prod­ucts direct to con­sumers (as well as through insti­tu­tions) with some­times unclear claims — this threat­ens to con­fuse con­sumers and present a major obsta­cle to the growth and cred­i­bil­ity of the sector.